Chapter 3 KEVIN SOLEZ – MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta [email protected] Megarian Myths: Extrapolating the Narrative Traditions of Megara Studying the local in the framework of localism is to study the parameters that constrain the lives and thoughts of people who conceive of themselves as belonging to a particular place. I am inspired by Conceptual Metaphor Theory,1 where the physical structures of the brain that encode sensory-motor experience are recruited by the brain for cognition about all abstract things.2 The local experience of individuals in their landscape and culture, much of this dependent on their home territory and mobility, is the source domain for their thinking about everything else, including places and people that are not present, and not part of their locale. The local referents and their dynamics - sensory-motor experience in the first place, but also geography, rituals, stories, institutions, ancestries, cuisine, economic activities, etc. – structure the thinking of those embedded in the locale and constitute an individual’s template of cognition. 1 The importance of the local and local experience in Conceptual Metaphor Theory can be seen in the work of Z. Kövecses, e.g. “In many cases the ‘same’ bodily phenomenon may be interpreted differently in different cultures and that activities of the body (and the body itself) are often ‘construed’ differentially in terms of local cultural knowledge.[…] And yet, it seems to me reasonable to suggest that the kinds of bodily experience that form the basis of many conceptual metaphors […] can and do exist independently of any cultural interpretation (be it either conscious or unconscious). They are products of the kinds of physical bodies we have. However, this is not to say that these products of the body cannot be shaped by local cultural knowledge” (2006: 42). 2 Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 255-258. Hans Beck and Philip J. Smith (editors). Megarian Moments. The Local World of an Ancient Greek City-State. Teiresias Supplements Online, Volume 1. 2018: 77-96. © Kevin Solez 2018. License Agreement: CC-BY-NC (permission to use, distribute, and reproduce in any medium, provided the original Work is properly attributed and not used for commercial purposes). Kevin Solez – Megarian Myths The embodied local experience of individuals was recognized as important in structuring their worldview long before Conceptual Metaphor Theory was formulated. In Henri Lefebvre’s reading of Marx and Engels, social space – the human being’s local environment – was “the outcome of past actions” but also “what permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others.”3 One’s lived environment constrains the possibilities of life. In cognitive experiments earlier in the twentieth century, it was discovered that “virtually everything to which the organism has been exposed” produces an “internalized schema” that systematizes cognitive behaviour.4 From several indicators in the cognitive and social sciences over the last 50 years, we maintain that the sensory-motor experience of the local environment is the material from which human cognition is built. Experience of the local is the source domain par excellence. This study is an attempt to reconstruct what Hans Beck calls in this volume the “Local Discourse Environment” as it can be extrapolated from cults, sacred sites, and festivals, since these are places of memory, venues for the “dissemination and veneration of local traditions.” There are distinct features of the Megarian worldview or thought-world, and these assist in reconstructing the narrative traditions. Megarian Duality: entre deux terres et deux mers5 A list of dualities or binary oppositions could be drawn up for any ancient Greek city, but I argue that the local Megarian worldview was particularly characterized by a duality that is in large part due to its peculiar geography and topography.6 There were two pre-Greek founders; Kar was indigenous to Argos, son of the autochthonous first king of Argos, and grandson of the River Inachus; Lelex came from Egypt, was son of Poseidon and Libya, and great-grandson of Zeus and Io.7 There are two acropoleis,8 a feature not common in 3 Lefebvre 1991: 73. 4 Nelson 1969. See also Restle 1961. 5 Muller 1984: 250, “Ces particularités de la Mégaride, entre deux terres et deux mers, expliquent la vocation commerçante plutôt qu’agricole de Mégare et l’importance qu’ont prise très tôt les voies de passage de son territoire.” 6 Muller 1984: 255. 7 Herda 2016: 78-82; Robu 2013-2014: 72; Paus. 1.39. 8 Danner 1997: 143; Legon 2004: 464; Paus. 1.40, 42. 78 Kevin Solez – Megarian Myths Greek poleis but shared, notably, by Argos, whence Kar came to Megara,9 and also by Dreros on Crete, Idalion on Cyprus, Melos, and Halikarnassos.10 The acropoleis, Karia and Alkathoa, at the center of the city, are linked by the agora that stands in the valley between them, and divide the city into northern and southern districts.11 Situated on the Isthmus of Corinth, the territory of Megara has a double opening to the sea,12 containing ports both to the north on the Corinthian gulf (Pagai, Aigosthena) and to the south on the Saronic gulf (Nisaia). The northern ports link Megara especially to Boiotia, Phokis (Delphi), and, less importantly for the narrative traditions, to points West, and to Attica and the eastern Mediterranean world via the southern port. Hero cults located on the way to Pagai connect Megara to Thebes (Autonoë, Hyllos, Alkmene),13 while those at Nisaia (Nisos, Lelex) link it to Athens and Egypt.14 The main roads for land travel lead to Corinth in the West and to Attica and Boiotia in the East, linking Megara to the two largest regions of mainland Greece, the Peloponnesos and the Balkan Peninsula, containing its most formidable states.15 East-west positionality is reflected also in cults and tombs, as the tomb of Kar, the Peloponnesian founder of Megara, is located on the coastal route to Corinth (Paus. 1.43). Megara was involved in overseas settlement both in the West and in the East, with a shift occurring early, around 700 BCE, from activity in Italy to activity in the Black Sea and Propontis.16 These activities would have magnified a Megarian’s sense that their community was oriented towards important and powerful places both to the West and to the East. Megara was a necessary node in both maritime and land-based trade.17 The main 9 Robu 2013-2014: 72; Paus. 1.39. 10 Argos, s.v. OEAGR; Idalion, s.v. PECS; Wright 1992: 247. Melos, Cherry and Sparkes 1982: 53-56. Halikarnassos, Penrose 2016: 173. 11 Muller 1984: 252. 12 Muller 1984: 249. 13 The locations of the monuments in Megara mentioned by Pausanias are contested, as few have been identified archaeologically. Here I follow the placements given in Herda 2016: 118 (map by N. Farakias after O. Alexandri 1970: 24-25). For an alternative placement of the monuments, see Muller 1981: 210. 14 Nisos, for whom Nisaia is named, was king of Athens before Aigeus, and became king of Megara. Robu 2013-2014: 71. 15 Muller 1984: 251. 16 Herda 2016: 33, 66; Robu 2013-2014: 76. 17 Legon 2004: 462; Muller 1984: 250. 79 Kevin Solez – Megarian Myths east-west road, from Corinth to Boiotia and Attica by way of Tripodiskos, and the north- south road connecting the ports, both pass unbroken through the agora.18 A Megarian’s lived experience is conditioned by these dualities, and the resulting ambiguity. All dualities presuppose a third term, and this is the Megarian, who mediates and adjudicates among these competing forces. The various terms of these dualities were not considered equally by those living in Megara. The cults and associated narrative traditions of Megara indicate an orientation towards the north and east, and a general neglect of Corinth, while nevertheless engaging with the Peloponnesos through stories of Argos, Pylos, and the house of Atreus. Mt. Geraneia separates Megara from Corinthian territory to the West, and from a high point in Megara important features of the landscape of Boiotia (Kithairon, Helicon) and Delphi (Parnassos) were visible.19 The stories associated with Geraneia are not related to Corinth, but rather to the origin of Megara and to Argos. In a foundation story additional to the one involving Kar and then Lelex, the eponymous hero/founder Megaros, child of Zeus and a Sithnid nymph (whose springs provide fresh water to Megara), escaped Deukalion’s flood on Mt. Geraneia (Paus. 1.40). Koroibos of Argos gave a name to Tripodiskos, on the slopes of Geraneia, after being ordered by the Pythia to carry a Delphic tripod until it fell, and had his tomb in Megara, adorned by the most ancient Greek sculptures known to Pausanias (Paus. 1.43). The visual environment assisted in the avoidance of Corinth in Megarian myths, and the reason for this avoidance may have been the all-too-powerful influence of Corinth and the Dorians on Megara.20 The Megarians did not hesitate to adopt the mythic traditions of their neighbours, as Peter Funke explained at the Megarian Moments conference, but under conditions of Corinthian and Dorian dominance, especially in the eighth and seventh 18 See Figure 1; Muller 1984: 252-255. 19 Legon 1981: 22. 20 “The Megarians succeeded in averting complete absorption by Corinth [in the second half of the eighth and the early seventh centuries], but lost irretrievably a large portion of their domain [west of Geraneia]. Relations between the two states were poisoned for centuries to come” (Legon 1981: 60, see also 63-64). The hostilities with Corinth may have developed a pan-Mediterranean importance if Herda (2016: 61-66) is right that Megara sided with Eretria and Miletus against Chalkis, Corinth, Karystos, and Samos on the losing side of the Lelantine War.